The 'Bicky Syndrome'

There was a couple in our locality when I was a child, who had a big and sleek dog called Bicky. One day when they shifted out of the locality, they left their dog behind. The abandoned dog mourned them horribly and slowly, he grew disheveled. Many people in the locality fed him, even as he grew thin and ragged. Neither did the other dogs trouble him too much. The thing about Bicky however was, that he was still tame, since he had retained the memory of having had owners and having lived in a proper home before being abandoned on the streets. It was this memory that made him more vulnerable than actually living on the roads did. He was no longer taken care of in the same way of course, but neither were the other dogs. He was getting by like the other fellows, who moreover, did not trouble him unduly. He also got more sympathy because he had a history of being abandoned.

Once we met Bicky skulking on the street corner and knowing him, I called him. Being tame, he answered to my calling, unlike the other friendly strays, who would have wagged their tails from a distance and mostly backed away. I must have been seven and delighted that Bicky came so readily to me, I hugged him and began petting him. To my horror, Bicky began weeping loudly, loud whines and wails issuing from him. I drew back in alarm because I thought I was hurting him at a place, where he had a wound. I grew afraid as passerby's began looking. I withdrew.

Years later, I was to confront another Bicky, when teaching classes for Newspapers in Education in Pune. I found a boy, who was constantly being turned out of class by his teachers. Each time I went to that school and taught this class 7th, he was standing outside and once I saw a teacher punish him. After three or four such instances, I asked his classmates about him and they told me all about his naughty deeds with glee amidst jeers. Finally finding him jabbing his fingers into holes in a wall, standing with his face to a corner, in what seemed like a perpetually punished situation, I asked him to come inside a nearby empty classroom, the members of which seemed to have just departed for PT. He refused to tell me what happened. I had a bottle of water with me and I asked him whether he would want a vada-pav. He refused. I put my arm on his shoulder. And then 'Bicky' happened. But it was not just weeping and pain. There was also anger. I did manage to lightly pat his shoulder. The boy was very lonely and felt abandoned by everyone: his classmates, teachers and probably those at home.

I don't know why I remembered the 'Bicky Syndrome' after so many years today. While recounting it to my husband, I suddenly felt close to tears, especially because he tried to hug me and looked so understanding and sympathetic. My first impulse was to push him away as a flash of anger went through me and I gulped down my tears reminding myself of being in a public bus.

Pouring love on others: indeed barging into other people's lives with love in our hearts is often a matter of privilege. And it is a privilege we cannot help, since we cannot help it if we haven't experienced suffering. Those who are recipients of this love deluge, on the other hand, often receive it very badly and seem very ungrateful in return. Maybe they feel very impoverished in the face of these outpourings of privileged love; they feel confronted with demands of gratitude.

What is perhaps more important, when dealing with the 'Bicky Syndrome' is sensitivity and respect about the extremely difficult and violent journeys that others, whom one loves, go through. It is perhaps more important to empower them to reciprocate one's love before one 'loves' them, so that they don't feel crushed by it. It is perhaps important not to cage them within their impoverishment if one indeed loves them and not hate them for not being able to reciprocate.

I thank Bicky for not having bitten me, back then. Perhaps the poor fellow was too tame. Or perhaps some self preservation instinct at the back of his mind might have kicked in. The households in the locality would have indeed lost all sympathy for him if he had bitten 'a child' and before long 'the men' would have seen to his demise, proclaiming him to be mad. Such is the typical case with so many among us who are helpless but are deemed ungrateful and violent. But I remember his pain.

It only takes crossing a small boundary to throw one's towel in after that and end one's slavery to whimsical love after what living with the memory of homelessness, abandonment and mistreatment tastes like.